Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Well, a vancomycin resistant staphylococcus bacterium has been imminent for a while, and here it is. In the short term, this is bad news, and makes going to hospital much scarier. In the long term, developing drugs that are capable of killing this new staph is not going to be impossible. (When it comes down to it, we humans can develop new medicines faster than bacteria can evolve. When we developed antibiotics, we knew nothing about molecular biology. We now know a lot, and this will eventually tell). Meanwhile, though, we should avoid taking antibiotics unless it is really necessary. And, if you do start a course of antibiotics, you should always finish them.

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